Cape Cod Home, Winter 2016 | capecodlife.com

Building a legacy, one step at a time

Cape Cod Home  /  Winter 2016 / ,

Writer: Ashley Owen / Photographer: Ashley Owen and Dan Cutrona 

Building a legacy, one step at a time

Cape Cod Home, Winter 2016 | capecodlife.com

Cape Cod Home  /  Winter 2016 / ,

Writer: Ashley Owen / Photographer: Ashley Owen and Dan Cutrona 

Building a business

Building a legacy, one step at a time, Winter 2016 Cape Cod Home | capecodlife.com

Kennedy hard at work in his shop. The craftsman says about 90 percent of his work happens right in the shop. Photograph by Ashley Owen.

Kennedy says the craft of woodworking is in his genes. His father, Michael, was a stair builder, and his great-grandfather was a woodworker and custom home builder. From a young age, Kennedy knew he needed to do something creative for his profession, and he always enjoyed working at his dad’s shop.

“I loved working with my hands, and I knew stairs could be a creative outlet for me,” Kennedy says. “At night I would stay and make things on my own; I made a table for myself, and I made a shelf that I ended up giving to a friend who hung it in his glass shop in downtown Hyannis.”

In 2004 Kennedy’s father bought a vacation house in Florida. When he spent time there, he left his son in charge of the business. Though he had been in the industry for only eight years at that point, Kennedy had already developed a passion for woodworking, and he kept the business operating smoothly. Within a few years, the elder Kennedy decided to sell the business and move to Florida full time. He offered to sell his son the shop, but because of the recession in 2008, Kennedy, in the interest of staying out of debt, opted to build his own business from the ground up. He purchased a few necessary tools and, at 23, started M.C. Kennedy Woodworking out of a small shop on his mother’s property in Marstons Mills.

“My dad gave me his contacts, and I started picking up clients on my own,” Kennedy says. “Some job sites, some builders, they had seen my work when my dad was in Florida. But some didn’t see that side of me, so I had to earn their respect. That was challenging.”

One convert is Gary Souza, president and owner of Rogers & Marney, Inc., an Osterville-based building company. “I really consider Matt an artist,” Souza says. “Some of the work he does is more sculptural than anything else. He received good training with his dad, but I think he’s taken it to another level.”

From his father’s client list of mostly contractors and builders, Kennedy says he has branched out and developed a niche working for homeowners. These jobs have turned out to be his favorites because he gets to design each stairway himself and work closely with clients to craft perfect layouts that they’ll love.

“I’m always working with homeowners to make the design really special and perfect,” he says. “I pick the client’s brain as much as possible. I like working with builders, too. Sometimes they don’t even know that I’m going to throw in some little detail, but I like doing it.”